Bhagavat is a Swiss/Italian black metal project, born in 2005 as a one-man band from Vama’s mind. The initial aim was to create music deeply inspired by the masters of Scandinavian black metal. With the passing of the years, stylistic evolution and the increasing need of live performing led to the research of additional members. This process resulted in a 3-piece lineup composed by Vama (guitar, voice), Mithra (guitar) and Maelstrom (drums). In 2009, the promo cd To Burn a Lair of Snakes was home-recorded and self-distributed. The work received excellent reviews both from Italian and foreign zines, which defined the sound of the band as a violent mixture of black and death metal elements.

Packed with a beautiful artwork, the new and first full-length of the band bearing the Italian title of Annunciazione will impress the listener with its fast burst of notes. The album delivers a black / death metal reminiscent of Behemoth for its powerful, violent and technical approach at the same time, although Bhagavat are even more technical.Of course it is not only this and one can also sense Scandinavian influences;e.g. “To Burn in Lair of Snakes” shows that also the melodic and polyphonic approach à la Dissection is significant to Bhagavat.But the Italian-Swiss band is also much inspired by death metal, in particular technical death metal, which is evident from the first note of the album.As already mentioned, Bhagavat are a technical band that bases its sound on complicated riffs, interweaving convoluted phrasings and a variety of rhythmic tempos.For example does “Black Tongue of Ground” not only display hypertechnical riffs but also elegant dissonances;in short, the skills of this band are not to be discussed.But sometimes all this technicality is a little too much and is at the expense of the atmosphere and incisiveness.The exasperated technicality can in the long run lead to a loss of interest on the behalf of the listener.I felt that after a while it was quite hard to listen to the entire album to the end.One of the rare moments of atmosphere that I really enjoyed is in “Il manifesto del malign”, when the guitars stop and their place is taken by the keyboards in accompanying the scream of Vama.

The production is very decent and the sound is good.In short, a good release, but the abuse of technicism sounds a bit like an end in itself;I think it would be better if Bhagavat in the future found a balance between technic and atmosphere.

Notes:Annunciazione was released on May 8 2015 via Rockshots Music. The digital and physical album can be purchased through the Bandcamp player below.